Rhetoric of Pregnancy

Seigel Marika

It is a truth widely acknowledged that if you're pregnant and can afford one, you're going to pick up a pregnancy manual. From "What to Expect When You're Expecting" to "Pregnancy for Dummies", these guides act as portable mentors for women who want advice on how to navigate each stage of pregnancy. Yet few women consider the effect of these manuals – how they propel their readers into a particular system of care or whether the manual they choose reflects or contradicts current medical thinking.

Using a sophisticated rhetorical analysis, Marika Seigel works to deconstruct pregnancy manuals while also identifying ways to improve communication about pregnancy and healthcare. She traces the manuals' evolution from early twentieth-century tomes that instructed readers to unquestioningly turn their pregnancy management over to doctors, to those of the women's health movement that encouraged readers to engage more critically with their care, to modern online sources that sometimes serve commercial interests as much as the mother's.

The first book-length study of its kind, "The Rhetoric of Pregnancy" is a must-read for both users and designers of our prenatal systems – doctors and doulas, scholars and activists, and anyone interested in encouraging active, effective engagement.

Contents

Foreword by Jane Pincus
Acknowledgments

1. Operating Instructions for Pregnancy
2. Usable Pregnancy
3. The Father of Prenantal Care: J. W. Ballantyne and System-Constitutive Documentation
4. The Mothers of Prenatal Care: Elizabeth Putnam, the IDNA, and User-Centered Care
5. Getting in the Way: Pregnancy Manuals during the Women's Health Movement
6. What to Expect from Risk Management
7. System Error: Troubleshooting the Pregnant Body
8. Virtually Pregnant: Consuming Prenatal Care

Conclusion Instruction for Systemic Change
Notes
References
Index

About the Author

Marika Seigel is associate professor of rhetoric and technical communication at Michigan Technical University. She lives in Houghton, MI.

Reviews

"'The Rhetoric of Pregnancy' connects and extends important scholarly conversations while advancing the ethical development of technical documentation and the practices (health care and otherwise) this documentation shapes. Practitioners, advocates, and pregnant women themselves will find this book accessible and instructive" – J. Blake Scott, author of "Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing"

"Marika Seigel argues eloquently for the need to change the current US system of prenatal care, labor, and delivery, and she does so in terms that will resonate with policy makers, health care professionals, and the expecting mothers who are the most important stakeholders in this situation. She incorporates key concepts from technical communication to shed light on the rhetorical function of pregnancy manuals as documents that not only instruct women how to do the work of pregnancy, labor, and delivery but also rhetorically construct the female reproductive body in a particular way. The book will make important contributions to scholarly conversations in technical communication, medical rhetoric, and women's studies" – Amy Koerber, Texas Tech University

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